Chapter 11: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Case Studies in Marine Natural Products

Marine natural products represent a remarkably diverse array of structure classes, many featuring “first-in-class” carbon skeletons, heterocycles, and functionality, further elaborated with stereochemical complexity. Typically isolated in low yields from complex natural extracts, these metabolites can be unstable and prone to rearrangement and/or degradation during handling and storage, and particularly during spectroscopic analysis. This chapter uses a number of case studies from the authors’ laboratory to illustrate some of the challenges encountered and benefits that arise from using NMR in the structure elucidation of marine natural products.